Notions of Home: Improving Medium Density Housing in Aotearoa New Zealand

The current state of home ownership in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) has sparked concern among many. Owning a quarter-acre lot with a stand-alone house and yard has become an unattainable luxury for the average citizen, and an unsustainable pattern of growth. As a result, there has been amarked increase n efforts to make housing more affordable and sustainable. With worldwide population growth, medium-density housing (MDH) models have emerged as part of the solution, but questions emain about how to design these spaces to promote well-being and meet the functional performance and visual appeal required of domestic architecture more commonly met by the conventional stand-alone house.

Additionally, it is important to understand how evolving notions of home in NZ, driven by factors such as technological advancements and changing human preferences, influence the design of dwellings. In this project, I aim to address these questions by exploring the potential of an innovative design approach for MDH developments generated from the analysis of past efforts to define the architecture of home in NZ. The analysis reveals how paradigm shifts and human preferences shape evolving notions of home, and leads to a design exploration drawing on relevant techniques and case studies to re imagine what might be possible. The design-led research presented here contributes to the field of interior architecture, to the field of architecture more broadly, and hopefully to more contextually esponsive patterns of MDH design in NZ